By a vote of 17 to 10, the Central Elections Committee voted Wednesday to disqualify the Arab parties Balad and Ra'am from competing in the Knesset election, citing their alleged incitement to terrorism.
The decision now automatically goes to the Supreme Court, in its capacity as an appellate instance, where is it likely to be overturned.
Under Basic Law: Knesset, parties and candidates can be barred from competing in elections if their "goals and actions, including direct and indirect statements, reject Israel's democratic and Jewish character, incite to racism, or support armed struggle by enemy states or terrorist groups against the State of Israel."
The Central Elections Committee is headed by a Supreme Court Justice but its other members are MKs, and thus tends to rule on such decisions along ideological lines. The Supreme Court, which under Basic Law: The Knesset has to approve all disqualifications, usually overturns them.
The vote to disqualify the parties, which have submitted a joint candidate list for the Knesset election, followed a heated debate in which right-wing activists showed that past and present Arab lawmakers from the parties praised terrorists and sounded anti-Israeli rhetoric.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party asked to disqualify the Balad-Ra'am list, praised the committee's decision. "Those who support terrorists will not enter the Israeli Knesset," he said.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman, whose right-wing party has repeatedly criticized Arab MKs for allegedly abusing Israel's democracy in order to bring about its demise, also lauded the committee: "People who accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip should not be allowed to have a Knesset seat; they should sit in Hamas' parliament or in the Iranian Majles in Tehran."
Ra'am and Balad officials reacted angrily to the decision, calling it a "racist, political and populist decision that is designed to undermine the political agency of Arab citizens."
The decision to disqualify the list came just hours after the committee ruled that Ofer Cassif, from the Jewish-Arab list of Hadash-Ta'al, cannot compete in the election because of controversial statements in which he allegedly questioned Israel's right to exist and expressed support for terrorism.
